Competition
by Zathara001
Summary: Parker and Ezekiel Jones trying to outdo each other... what could possibly go wrong?
Author's Note: A commenter requested the "thief-off" between Parker and Ezekiel Jones, as referenced in "United," and here it is…. So, as a continuity note, this story takes place at some undefined time after "United."

Disclaimer: As always, I own nothing to do with Leverage or The Librarians, and all rights in this work are hereby given to those who do.

Lamia had never expected to enjoy administrative work - even if she was administering the largest private collection of ancient texts and artifacts in the world. Still, working at Chamblin House was familiar - she'd lived there for several years while working with Dulaque - and even a year after his death, the familiarity still brought a comfort she wasn't willing to let go of yet.

Not yet, but soon.

For now, however, she maintained the Benwick Collection, adding to it on occasion, and coordinated visits from scholars from around the world who paid a nominal fee to stay in Chamblin House itself and have round-the-clock access to the objects of their study.

Today, not only were four scholars booked for extended stays, but half a dozen others had come each day for the last week. Not bad, she thought, for a collection open to scholars less than a year.

Best of all, scholars tended to be a quiet bunch, so even when the house was full, as it was now, it still felt almost empty, a silence born of -

"Rape! I'm being raped! Someone call the police!"

Lamia was moving before the second word, her katana in hand, as she raced from her office, trying to track the source of the voice…

The voice that came from the speakers scattered throughout the house as part of the security system Eliot Spencer had insisted be upgraded when he took over the House and the Collection.

"Bothersome thieves," she murmured to herself, and allowed her steps to slow just a little as she turned toward the stairs to the basement, and the Glenn Reeder vault secured in a side room.

When she reached her destination, she paused in the doorway, watching Ezekiel Jones working at the keypad set into the wall by the safe. His movements were quick, but not frantic, and despite the voice still shrieking from the speakers, he was completely focused on his work.

"Having a spot of trouble?" Lamia asked.

Jones started but recovered quickly. "Nothing a world-class thief can't handle."

"If someone's actually calling the police, the world-class thief might get in over his head."

"Like police are trouble." Jones made some adjustment Lamia didn't see, and the voice cut off mid-scream.

"Why was the alarm system screaming?"

"You know Stone and Spencer want us to secure this place against each other?"

Lamia nodded. Eliot had said something about letting the two thieves compete with each other to keep the Benwick Collection safe from other thieves. She'd filed it away as of use but little interest. Apparently, she'd been wrong about that last.

"Parker got bored and said that we should make it more challenging, by having failure broadcast." Jones frowned at the control panel. "I didn't think she meant literally. Hardison must have helped her with this."

"Whether she had help or not, I'm the one who has to go calm down a bunch of older scholars who probably haven't thought the word _rape_ in their adult lifetimes," Lamia said. "Please keep any future broadcasts of your failures private."

Lamia didn't wait for his reply before turning back to the stairs and the doubtlessly confused scholars needing reassurance after this incident.

Perhaps she'd be ready to leave sooner than she'd thought.

#

Eliot wandered into the command center - he'd finally given in and started calling it that, if only in his mind - and nodded to Hardison. "Where's Parker?"

"I'm here."

The voice came from above him, and he tilted his head back so he was looking at Parker where she perched in the rafters as he nodded. From this angle, most of her was in shadow, and Eliot smiled to himself. At least half of her gift for surprising people came from their own lack of awareness.

Then again, he'd done the exact same thing just now when he came into this familiar room - he'd taken in the obvious and not checked for more.

 _Getting too comfortable here,_ he told himself. Even if this was a comfort he'd chosen, he needed to be more careful - for the sake of the others who shared his life, if not his own.

"Who are we going after today?" Eliot took his usual seat and took another sip of coffee while Hardison called up data on the screen.

"David Bollington," Hardison said. "Real estate developer - or so he claims. He'll set up a sales trailer on a piece of undeveloped land, bring in a skeleton construction crew so it looks like work is actually being done on the land, and once he's collected earnest money from eager buyers, he rolls up shop and vanishes into the wind - or, more accurately, lies low for a couple of months before setting up shop somewhere else."

"Takes a lot of buyers to pony up that kind of earnest money," Eliot observed.

"Ten thousand apiece," Hardison agreed. "At least - depends on the market. See, he sells them as super-luxurious, but affordable. The extra earnest money up front offsets the cheaper price down the road. Or so he says."

"And people want to believe it," Eliot murmured. "How are we taking him down?"

"He collects art." Parker's voice comes from above, echoing slightly in the open space. "So we send in a couple who are going to have to sell some art to make their earnest money deposit, lure him in to see their collection, and convince him to buy it."

"That's … different," Eliot said.

"We don't have time for anything more subtle," Parker said.

"He's been at his current location five months," Hardison clarified. "He never stays in one place more than six, so we need to move fast."

That made sense, Eliot had to admit. And they'd succeeded with stranger plans than this one. Which meant only the details had to be worked out, starting with,

"So who's Parker's happy husband for this gig?"

"Well, actually -" Hardison began, but was cut off by whisper-quiet _whoosh_ of Parker sliding down her line to land on the table beside Eliot.

"I'm not going," she said.

"Why not?" Eliot asked, but stopped as he saw her face - her neon orange face. _Not a good color for a blonde,_ a part of his mind noted. Then he asked the obvious question. "What the hell happened?"

"Ezekiel Jones." Parker all but snarled the name, and Eliot winced.

When he and Jake had suggested the two thieves try to keep each other out of Chamblin House, he hadn't expected Jones to actually get the better of Parker.

"I'll talk to him," Eliot began, but Parker shook her head.

"Naw, man," Hardison said. "We got Jones. What we don't got is someone who can pass for an art expert to bait Bollington."

Eliot blew out a breath. "I'll call Maggie."

#

The man currently known as Jenkins looked up when the Back Door opened and Ezekiel Jones strode into the Annex.

"And how was your mission, Mr. Jones?"

"Disappointing," the younger man answered.

"Disappointing?"

"Yeah, disappointing." Mr. Jones slung a backpack onto the work table. "I went to Chamblin House."

"Ah, yes," Jenkins said. "Your challenge with Miss Parker."

"We've been pranking each other," Mr. Jones continued. "If we fail to get inside, something blows up in our face - not literally," he added.

"Why is that disappointing?"

"Because I tripped one of her electronic safeguards - Hardison must have helped her with it, it was really subtle - and all I got was a message on the screen."

Mr. Jones paused, presumably for dramatic effect, but Jenkins had seen too much of that in his life to give in beyond an interested expression and a quirked eyebrow.

" _Bang, you're dead_ ," Mr. Jones said, even his tone conveying his bemusement. "That's it? _Bang, you're dead_? I expected something with more style, especially after what happened the first time I tripped one of her fail-safes."

It was with a sense of dread that Jenkins asked, "Which was?"

"The computer screamed and yelled that it was being attacked and needed help. Compared to that, _bang, you're dead_ …" Mr. Jones gave an exaggerated shrug. "I didn't expect Parker's game to fall off so quickly. But the trip wasn't a total waste. I got some good pictures for my Facebook and Instagram pages."

"We've spoken about this before," Jenkins said. "The Library only succeeds because people don't know it exists. Discretion, Mr. Jones, is the watchword."

"I can discret as well as anyone," Mr. Jones said, and Jenkins privately winced at the younger man's abuse of the language. But he fell silent as Mr. Jones removed his laptop from his backpack and powered it up - a thought he hadn't wanted to think coalesced in his mind.

Discretion had been the Library's watchword as far back as he remembered - which was farther than he wanted to admit - and when he'd been tucked away as caretaker of the Annex, it had been easy to believe it still was. But -

But he'd been exposed to the modern world now, more than he ever had been in the past and largely thanks to the junior Librarians Mr. Carsen had brought in, and now he couldn't help but wonder if discretion should remain the Library's watchword. Times, after all, changed whether he appreciated that or not.

A strangled noise from Mr. Jones yanked him from his reverie "Is something wrong?"

"Gone," Mr. Jones said. "I'm gone!"

"You are standing beside me, Mr. Jones - hardly gone."

"No, mate - from the Internet. Look!"

Mr. Jones spun his laptop around so that Jenkins could see the screen.

"I don't see anything," he said.

"That's the point! All my photos, all my updates - they're all gone! And, no, I've tried to recover them, but even the recovery files are gone."

"And," Jenkins said, "that is a kind of death, is it not?"

"It's worse," Mr. Jones declared. "It's like I don't exist, like I never existed."

Jenkins couldn't help the smile tugging at his mouth. "Bang, you're dead."

Mr. Jones ignored the comment, focused as he was on, "I'll get her back for this. Something spectacular…"

#

Jacob looked around the Annex, surprised by the contentment - there was no other word for it - that he felt.

For once, all the junior Librarians were at the Annex while between big cases, along with Baird. Each of them were engrossed in their own work, and even Jenkins had brought his latest project to the main room, an earthquake detector from ancient China that, Jenkins claimed, detected much more than earthquakes … when it worked.

Moments like these - working beside others as passionate about their work as he was about his own - were rare in his previous life, but had become almost commonplace since he'd become a Librarian. He hoped he never took them for granted.

His phone vibrated silently, and he jumped. When he worked like this, he could almost forget the modern world existed.

The text was from Eliot. _Jones at the Annex?_

Jacob frowned, but typed back, _All of us are._

Eliot's response came back immediately. _Keep him there. Be there in ten._

Jacob sent back an acknowledgment, but found he couldn't return to his own reading - a book on the occult aspects of the architecture of Washington, D.C., by none other than Pierre Charles L'Enfant himself. What could Eliot possibly want with Ezekiel Jones, when Eliot was friends with a better hacker and, though Jacob would never admit it aloud, a better thief than Jones?

A flicker of movement caught his attention, and Jacob realized that Eliot had meant ten _seconds_ , not the ten minutes he'd assumed. His twin had come to the corridor leading to the Annex's mundane entrance, Alec Hardison standing behind him half-hidden in the shadowy corridor. Eliot flicked a glance toward Jacob, shook his head minutely, and Jacob nodded once in return.

Whatever was happening next, Jacob would let it play out.

Jacob watched his twin move silently, swiftly, across the floor to where Jones sat. Then Eliot grabbed Jones' shoulder and spun him around on his stool.

Jones let out a yelp, and Baird shot to her feet, her Glock in her hand.

"Crikey, Spencer," Jones finally said around his gasped breaths, "you about gave me a heart attack."

"Would've been kinder and quicker than what's coming," Eliot observed. Then he met Baird's gaze. "Put it away, Colonel."

"What do you mean, what's coming?" Baird asked, lowering her Glock.

Eliot ignored her in favor of turning to Hardison - who only now moved into the main room.

"She'll come through that door." Eliot jerked his head toward the Back Door. Hardison nodded once and angled toward the Back Door.

With Hardison's movement, Jacob saw his twin relax, however fractionally, and chanced asking, "What's going on?"

"Dumbass here," Eliot glared at Jones, "pissed Parker off. Which means he pissed us off, too."

"It's just a joke," Jones said. "You guys have no sense of humor."

Eliot's eyes narrowed, and Jacob fought the urge to protect Jones. Before Eliot could respond, the Back Door opened, and Parker came stalking through, a screwdriver in her upraised left hand, and the look in her eyes -

Jacob swallowed - he'd seen that look once before, in a dragon's lair in Rome, when Flynn had almost gotten Parker killed. He'd stopped her then, but now Alec Hardison stepped up for the job, catching Parker in his arms and holding tight and murmuring words that Jacob hoped would soothe Parker's ire.

Jacob wasn't sure, but he thought he heard, "You're at two hundred twelve days without stabbing anyone, baby. Let's keep that streak going, 'kay?"

"What's going on, Jones?" Baird asked.

"These two," Ezekiel gestured between Eliot and Jacob, "said we should try to keep each other out of Chamblin House. Parker and I decided to pull pranks on each other if we triggered the other's alarms."

"This," Parker said in a voice that even Jacob recognized as _too_ calm, "is not a _prank_."

Jacob looked at her and saw that she held up her right hand now, and in it was … Jacob blinked, squinted as though that might help him believe what he saw.

Clenched in her fingers was a dial of some sort. Given that she and Jones were both thieves, Jacob could only conclude the dial came from a safe at Chamblin House.

"Course it is," Ezekiel replied with a cheeky grin. "Contact glue on the dial - it's a classic."

Parker snarled and lunged toward Jones, only to be caught up short when Hardison swung her around. "Let it go, babe."

"You messed with her hands," Eliot said. "You compromised Parker's ability to do her job. That's not a prank, Jones - that's an assault, and you're damn lucky Mia was able to stall her long enough for us to get here. Otherwise, that screwdriver she's holding would've been stuck through your neck."

Jacob could only shake his head when Ezekiel turned a panicked glance to Parker, who held up the screwdriver and made stabbing motions with it. Had Jones really not realized how much danger he'd been in - not just from Eliot who still, Jacob thought, looked ready to kill, but Parker?

"Not the first time, either," Eliot said. "Your last prank covered her in neon orange paint - which meant she couldn't work the time-sensitive job we had."

"I didn't think about that," Jones said.

"Many things that fall into that category for you, Mr. Jones," Jenkins said. "Miss Parker, if you'll come with me, I believe I have something that will dissolve that glue."

Parker squirmed free of Hardison's grasp and started toward Jenkins. The move took her past Jones, and she thrust the screwdriver toward him. Jones jerked away from the move, but not before Eliot had caught the screwdriver and wrenched it from her grasp.

"Thanks, mate," Jones said as Parker followed Jenkins from the room.

"Don't thank me yet," Eliot said. "I still might stab you myself."

"You wouldn't -" Jones began, and broke off at the expression on Eliot's face. He turned instead to Jacob. "You wouldn't let him stab me would you, Stone?"

"Let him?" Jacob repeated. "At this point, I'd help him."

"But -"

Jacob cut him off. "You pushed too far, Jones. Even the orange paint was too far, it sounds like. Figure out some way to make it up to her."

"She likes money," Eliot said. "Lots of it."

"If you think I'm going to buy my way into -" Jones sounded indignant.

"I think you've got groveling to do," Jacob said. "And if money's what it takes, that's what you'll start with. Got it?"

Jones met his gaze for a long moment before slumping. "Got it."

"Great," Hardison said. "Now will someone please tell me why, after all these months, it took _this_ for someone to show me the Library?"


End file.
